Near field communication (NFC) tags contain chips which can store a small amount of information for transfer to an NFC enabled device. A NFC tag can be programmed or encoded with any data by using an NFC enabled device and a NFC encoding software installed thereon. The NFC tag can thereafter be locked so that data written to the NFC tag cannot be altered. Data on the NFC tag can be transferred to any NFC device by tapping the NFC tag.